Lou Jiwei

In a stark and unexpected development, one which could have significant consequences for the future of China's economic reform push, on Monday Beijing unexpectedly removed Lou Jiwei, its highest-profile finance minister in years. His removal raises questions about whether reform-minded officials are being sidelined as Beijing prioritizes short-term growth over major overhauls.

US Index futures, together with European and Asian shares surged after the FBI cleared Hillary Clinton one last time of her handling of emails as secretary of state which it repeated wasn’t a crime. Oil, gas rise, together with most industrial metals; the yen and Swiss franc retreated with gold, silver and other flight to safety assets.

While the G-20 group traditionally tries to put on a united front, a curious divergence emerged following the latest meeting in China, where as Bloomberg notes Chinese and U.S. officials "showed signs of being at odds on how synchronized efforts to boost global growth need to be, with China stressing the need for improved coordination more than the U.S."U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew on Thursday talked down the need for crisis-level coordination as he headed to Chengdu, China, for the meeting.

There's no masking the facts. As Reuters reports, one Chinese factory is expecting Donald Trump to beat his likely U.S. presidential rival Hilary Clinton in the popularity stakes..."I think in 2016 this mask will completely sell out," said factory manager Jacky Chen, indicating a Trump mask.

Not only is China facing a significant risk of an economic hard landing, but, as we have noted on many occasions, the country is also facing what perhaps may be an even greater risk: social unrest. As the economy continues to weaken, and layoffs continue to mount, China has started to relax its own labor rules in order to try and keep everyone happy... for now; as China is experiencing a surge in part-time workers. In order to control costs, but still meet whatever demand comes, Reuters reports factories are now hiring by the day instead of keeping workers around in a full employment contract.

As we wrote early yesterday when we summarized the outcome of the first day of China's People's Congress, China failed to deliver any of the major stimulus programs the market was expecting. So what exactly did China announce on its first day of the National People's Congress. Read on to find out...

“Keeping the previous language would be very disappointing and would be viewed as either complacent or reflecting policy paralysis. [They need to] man up and tell member countries that monetary policy should be accompanied by fiscal expansion.”

While the world was following the tragic events unfolding on Friday night in France where hundreds of innocent civilians were killed or injured, an important economic development took place at the IMF, whose staff and head Christine Lagarde, officially greenlighted the acceptance of China's currency - the Renminbi, or Yuan - into the IMF's foreign exchange basket, also known as the Special Drawing Rights. Here are the initial early responses by various Wall Street analysts.

The message from China was heard loud and clear from the IMF meetings in Lima: The United States [Fed] "should assume its global responsibilities" given the dollar's status as reserve currency; "now is not the time to raise rates."

We, like Bloomberg's Richard Breslow, were bemused this weekend by the communiques from the wisest men in the room at the G-20 meeting. On one side of their mouths they warned of "excessive risk-taking," in markets noting that there were "mounting economic risks" also. On the other hand, stories continue to print of US equity strength implying optimism over global growth - despite the ongoing collapse in consensus GDP expectations. However, away from this hope and fear, it was the almost coordinated responses of the PBOC (Chinese Finmin Lou Jiwei signaling not to get carried away with stimulus expectations), ECB (Visco saying may not need additional QE step since EUR had dropped 'enough'), and finally the BOJ (Iwata saying Abenomics misunderstood, USDJPY 90-100 'fair); all dashing market expectations of a smooth hand over from a feckless Fed to a free-printing rest-of-the-world. Stocks (and carry) responded by selling off.

While some were wondering if last night's sudden, commodity-liquidation driven selloff would last, most were not, expecting that the perfectly predictable levitation in the USDJPY around a round "tractor beam" number would provide a floor under the market .Sure enough, starting around midnight eastern, the USDJPY BTFDers emerged, oblivious to comments from former BOJ deputy governor Iwata who late last night said the obvious, and what we have been saying since January 2013, namely that a weak yen puts Japan at recession risk, and that a USDJPY in the 90-100 range reflects Japan fundamentals. And, as expected, the 109 level is where the algos have hone in today as a strange FX attractor, which also means that ES has reverse sharper overnight losses and was down just 7 points at last check even as the poundage in the commodity sector continues over rising fears of a sharp Chinese slowdown driven by its imploding housing sector (most recently observed here) without an offsetting stimulus program, following several comments by high-ranked Chinese individuals who poured cold water on any hopes of an imminent Chinese mega-QE or even modest rate cut.

China is already Iran’s largest trading partner and oil customer and Iran is China’s third largest oil provider... and this week Iran and China’s Defense Ministers vowed to boost military ties following a meeting in Beijing on Monday. Chinese officials noted that "common views over many important political-security, regional and international issues, Beijing assumes Tehran as its strategic partner."